White Trash (sometimes Poor White Trash) is a derogatory term with a classist component targeted at white people with low social status, poor prospects (i.e., downward mobility), or lack of education. To call someone white trash is to accuse a white person of being economically, educationally and culturally bankrupt. Though the term is commonly used to refer to a particular stereotype of the South of the United States, it did not actually arise in there, but rather among black Americans in urban Baltimore, Maryland. Free and enslaved blacks used the term to disparage poor whites, especially Irish immigrants and other semiskilled workers. It is said that White trash first came into common use in the 1830s as a pejorative used by upper-class United States southerners of all races against poor non-Latino whites.
